A statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje [Photo: Robert Benson] On September 30th, the people of a small country on the periphery of the European Union went to the polls to ask the question: what, if anything, is in a name?

For the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the stakes could not be higher. Since its independence in 1991, Macedonia has been in a quixotic albeit highly-charged public row with Greece over its official state title. The problem stems from the perceived appropriation of the name Macedonia from a geographic and historical region of northern Greece which shares the country’s namesake.

The Greeks, for their part, claim that the government of Macedonia has deliberately tried to co-opt its Hellenic culture through a policy of ‘antiquisation’. Literally, the building of garish monuments and bronze statues scattered seemingly ironically through the capital city of Skopje and culminating in a surreal tribute to Alexander the Great: A spectacle that one must first see to believe.

The policy was the brainchild of then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, whose nationalist government was brought down by a series of dramatic wiretapping revelations in 2016 and who this year was found guilty of abusing state funds.

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The world record for a democracy going without an elected government is held by Belgium, which went 589 days in 2010- 2011 because the opposing Flemish and Walloons were unable to agree on policy issues and form a governing coalition following national elections.

Podcast

In this episode of our interview series, our host Lynda Iroulo talks to James Currey, co-founder of the Oxford-based James Currey Publishers and, together with Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe, creator of the African Writers Series launched in 1962.

Listen in, as Currey gives insight into his first steps in the publishing business and contemporary African literature, and why he doesn’t intend to stop what he is doing any time soon.

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